How the Fundamentalist Mind Compels Conservative Christians to Force Their Beliefs on You

Many evangelicals wear their religion on T-shirts and around their necks and on car bumpers and eye-blacks. They hand out tracts on college campuses and stage revival meetings on military bases. They use weddings and funerals to preach come-to-Jesus sermons. In their resolve to spread the good news that Jesus saves, some also do things that are more morally dubious.

In Tucson, nice young couples cultivate relationships with lonely college students without disclosing that they are paid to engage in “friendship missions.” In Seattle, volunteers woo first- and second-graders to afterschool Good News Clubs that the children are incapable of distinguishing from school-sponsored activities. In Muslim countries, Christian missionaries skirt laws that ban proselytizing by pretending to be mere aid workers, putting genuinely secular aid workers at risk. In the U.S. military, soldiers bully other soldiers into prayer meetings or the Passion of the Christ and then send bizarrely profane emails to people who try to stop them.

Perhaps the most devastating consequence of evangelical zeal in recent decades has been millions of unnecessary deaths in Africa. Many evangelicals saw the HIV epidemic as an opportunity.

“AIDS has created an evangelism opportunity for the body of Christ unlike any in history,” said Ken Isaacs of Samaritan’s Purse. Another group that pursued HIV dollars has its mission built right into its name: Community Health Evangelism. Christian ideology ultimately redirected billions of U. S. aid dollars away from science-based results-oriented interventions such as contraceptive access and safe-sex education and into programs that espoused traditional Christian values: monogamy, evangelism, and compassionate after-the-fact care for the sick.

2. K&R

3. I read the whole thing.

The author does not provide an explanation for what compels these people, but just a set of states and approaches to morality.

It just kind of rambles around without really making a point.

I can sum up their compulsion thusly: "Because of the very tenuous and conflicted nature of their beliefs, the existence of any other ideology represents a serious threat to those beliefs and therefore the foundations of their egos. In order to feel secure in their beliefs, they require constant validation by suckering people in to the fold and then convincing themselves that it was the strength of the 'truth' they hold to rather than the psychological gimmicks they employ that won the converted over."